DistroWatch Weekly

A weekly opinion column and a summary of events from the distribution world

DistroWatch Weekly

DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 105, 20 June 2005

Welcome to this year's 25th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! This issue focuses on some of the interesting events of the past week, including the war of words between the Linux and BSD communities, the failure of Lycoris as a business model, and the surprising revelation that the founder of Gentoo and one of the leading Linux personalities has accepted a job offer from Microsoft. We also wonder why SUSE does not participate in this year's LinuxTag, introduce a Debian sarge variant "with a human face", and tell you how to get the latest release of Linspire for free. The featured distribution of the week is INSERT, a tiny security and rescue live CD. Happy reading!

Probably the biggest news of the past week was the controversy surrounding some of the comments allegedly made by OpenBSD's founder Theo de Raadt. In an article at Forbes.com (Is Linux For Losers?), Theo was quoted as saying that "[Linux] is terrible. Everyone is using it, and they don't realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, 'This is garbage and we should fix it.'" As expected, the reaction in the open source community to the article was rather vocal, with almost 1,200 comments on Slashdot alone.

Interestingly, as little as a week prior to the publication of the above article, Theo de Raadt was also interviewed by NewsForge. In it, while answering a question whether he believed that BSD was a technically more correct operating system than Linux, Theo replied: "I don't know. I have never run Linux."

The obvious contradiction found in the above two quotes leads to various speculations: 1. Until two weeks ago Theo had never used Linux, but then he spent a week going through tens of thousands of lines of kernel code just to learn "how bad Linux is". 2. Theo is not unknown for creating controversies just for the sake of them and he just happened to be in the mood for creating one last week. 3. Forbes.com twisted Theo's replies to make them sound more "sensational", a practice hardly uncommon among today's mainstream journalists.

So which one is it? Or do you have any other theory that would explain the sudden rise of bad blood between Linux and BSDs, both of which are well-proven operating systems powering many mission-critical computers? Please discuss below.

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Another (mildly) interesting news was the acquisition of the Lycoris Desktop/LX distribution by Mandriva, only a few months after the same company also acquired Brazil's Conectiva. Of course, by the time Mandriva bought Lycoris, the newly acquired company was down to just one employee - the founder and CEO of Lycoris Joseph Cheek. As such, the phrase "Mandriva acquired Lycoris" is roughly equivalent to "Mandriva employed a new developer", but that would not sound so good and would certainly not attract the attention of the media.

What does this acquisition mean? First of all, it means that Lycoris failed. Not as a distribution; in fact, many reviewers found Lycoris Desktop/LX a great operating system, quite capable of replacing Windows on the desktops of less technically inclined users without much loss in functionality. Rather, Lycoris failed as a business model. There is little doubt that Joseph Cheek is a talented developer who understands the needs of computer users better than most Linux developers today. But as a businessman and manager, his skills are not quite at the same level. The main reason for Lycoris to fail was, we believe, lack of open communication between the distribution's developers and their devoted users. How on earth can one justify discontinuing free downloads of their main product (despite having previously claimed that Desktop/LX will always be free to download) without communicating the decision to their users? And did they honestly think that removing the free download would result in higher sales figures? Even worse, any "negative" comments, including complaints about any aspect of Lycoris, were banned on the distribution's user forums and routinely deleted by the over-zealous moderators.

The final nail in the Lycoris' coffin was their customer service - or rather lack of it. Many users reported that they never received their product, even though their credit cards had been charged as much as 2 - 3 months prior to the product's shipping date! It turned out that Lycoris had outsourced the packaging and distribution of their products to a third-party entity, which was simply unable to carry out the task in a responsible manner.

It is not yet clear how this "acquisition" will affect Mandriva's product line. There is some talk that Joseph Cheek might be working on the "Discovery Pack", an entry-level distribution for non-technical users and first-time Linux converts. This is one product that would certainly benefit from Joseph's experience in designing user-friendly desktops for novice users. But this remains just a speculation at this time - after all, Mandriva's next release isn't due until around October.

Desktop/LX was a distribution with a likeable user interface, we are sad to see it go.(full image size: 1,165kB)

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So how do you feel about the fact that Gentoo's founder Daniel Robbins now works for Microsoft? If you don't find anything wrong with the concept, let us re-phrase the above sentence: Daniel Robbins, one of the best-known and most talented Linux developers, is now working for a company that is known to have gone to extreme length to attack and discredit Linux at every opportunity and whose chairman has been actively lobby foreign governments for speedy adoption of software patents. Now that doesn't sound so innocent any more, does it?

Although Daniel Robbins is an excellent developer and writer (we still keep and often refer to many of his excellent Linux articles on IBM developerWorks), we also noticed, based on occasional pleas on Gentoo's mailing lists and forums, that he isn't very good with managing his financial affairs. He repeatedly stated that he had accumulated large debts during the past few years and that he had troubles paying them off. The Gentoo user community tried to help by organising "fund raising" for their fearless leader, but it seems that these efforts never helped to eliminated Daniel's financial problems.

He left the Gentoo project early last year. Many speculated that the main reason for his departure was the fact that working on Gentoo did not provide sufficient income for him to pay the bills, so he chose to seek formal employment with a regular pay cheque. But none of us would imagine in our wildest nightmares that the lucky company acquiring such talent will be none other than Microsoft, the biggest and most resourceful enemy of Linux and Free Software! Of course, we don't question his decision - after all Daniel is a free man and he is free to do whatever he thinks is best for himself and his family. However, we do feel the loss of some of the respect we had for Daniel for many years.

The moral of the story? Never get into debt. If you do, you might have to sell your soul to the devil just to save your family!

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Speaking about Microsoft, it seems that the giant software maker has recently stepped up its anti-Linux campaign. Some readers have reported that, in certain regions, its "Get The Facts" advertisements are now displayed as Google AdSense text boxes; upon investigation, we found that Microsoft has registered a number of domain names, including getthefacts.com msgetthefacts.com, getthefacts.co.nz, and possibly some others, and is trying to pass these as "independent research studies comparing Windows with Linux". Even worse, Microsoft has succeeded in invading many so-called Linux advocacy sites around the world with its huge and often localised anti-Linux advertisements and banners plastered all over them. These businesses that are happy to pocket Microsoft's money in exchange for spreading its FUD and anti-Linux agenda include: LinuxPlanet.com, LinuxWorld.com, Japan.linux.com (in Japanese), Linux+ (in Polish), Root.cz (in Czech) and many other web sites. Even NewsForge.com has been carrying these banners.

As our regular readers know, we consider this practice unethical for any web site or business that uses and benefits from Linux and Free Software. We have been campaigning against such web sites in the past. We need to be more vigilant then ever - there are signs that Microsoft's "Get The Facts" crusade is very effective in convincing corporate managers and IT decision makers not to embrace Linux. It is essential that we put more pressure on these web sites to stop them from spreading anti-Linux propaganda. Luckily we have some good news in this respect - after suspending the Linux+ Live distribution from DistroWatch last week, we received an email from the Editor-in-Chief of the Polish Linux magazine saying that they had removed all Microsoft banners from the Linux+ web site. If we can all apply similar measures, stop visiting these sites and stop linking to their stories, maybe they will finally understand that they are actually hurting Linux, instead of helping its adoption.

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LinuxTag, the world's largest Linux exhibition, will open its doors to visitors later this week in Karlsruhe, Germany. Sadly, SUSE, one of the main backbones of the Linux movement in the host country, will not attend: "For the first time SUSE won't attend LinuxTag with a booth of their own. For the last years, SUSE maintained one of the largest booths and endless streams of visitors and business people went to their booth to get the new stuff. ... It's quite embarrassing that after Novell took over the steering wheel, the management is either not interested in the German market any more or simply doesn't understand it. Compare this to the 70 m² booth for Red Hat, 21 m² for Debian, 12 m² for Rock Linux, 9 m² for Arch Linux and even 36 m² for a company from Redmond I'm not going to name here."

On a related note, if you happen to be in the area and visit the show, don't forget to get the new KNOPPIX 4.0 live DVD and tell us what it's like!

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Despite all the improvements in version 3.1, the truth is that Debian still remains largely a developer's distribution without many of the user-friendly enhancements that other Linux distributions have been implementing in their own products. Luckily, for those users who don't want to spend hours on post-install configuration of Debian "sarge", here is an interesting alternative - Debian Pure: "Debian Pure is not about creating an additional distribution, rather, a CD that will help newer users with installing a Debian proper system along with common plugins (DVD, Flash, Java, and MPlayer). The CD includes options to install from CD or net and to install either GNOME or KDE desktops. Please download a copy and give it a try!" This sound like a great idea, especially since it remains 100% compatible with the Debian "sarge" repository. More information and download links here.

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If you are a Lycoris user and wonder which distribution to turn to next, here is a sweet offer from Linspire: "Linux is supposed to be free, but Linspire costs money, and $49.95 at that. But here’s how to get it free. You have to register a free account at linspire.com. Then go to the products, and click on Buy Now under Linspire Five-0. When you are in the Shopping Cart, click on Apply Coupon and then enter 'LycorisWelcome'. That will make Linspire free. Then just finish up the transaction and download the ISO when your done. I’m not sure how long this will last, so get it now. Enjoy!"

Web sites: ReviewLinux.com

Here is some news about an interesting web site for distribution reviews, called ReviewLinux.com, which was launched over the weekend: "Welcome to ReviewLinux.com. We are now open for your reviews of the various Linux distributions. Please feel free to sign up and become an author and let other users of Linux learn from your experiences with Linux! Point your RSS readers to our syndicate page and keep updated on our latest reviews." This sounds like a perfect place to exchange views and experiences with the many Linux distributions.

Featured distribution of the week: INSERT

INSERT

The easy adaptability of Linux and open source software has given birth to a large range of security and rescue distributions and live CDs. Their purpose range from forensic analysis of compromised systems, to virus removal from Windows partitions and recovery of data from failed hard disks. One of the more interesting live CDs among these is Inside Security Rescue Toolkit, or INSERT for short, developed by Germany's Inside Security IT Consulting.

INSERT is a minimalist distribution that fits on a 50MB credit card-size CD, which makes it easy to carry around in a wallet. But despite its small size, the live CD boots into a graphical environment with Fluxbox, and includes a large number of useful applications for recovery tasks. The CD has read/write support for NTFS partitions, which together with the presence of ClamAV anti-virus software makes it a great tool for cleaning up infected Windows boxes. Besides NTFS, INSERT supports 22 other different file systems, including some compressed, obscure, and rarely used ones. For disaster recovery, the live CD comes with a number of partitioning tools, as well as various packages for forensic analysis (chkrootkit, foremost, rootkit hunter). The distribution also comes with excellent networking tools.

The INSERT live CD is released under the General Public License. To find out more, please visit the project's home page at inside-security.de.

INSERT - a 50MB live CD with a good range of forensic analysis and system recovery tools(full image size: 198kB)

Released Last Week

Fedora Core 4

Fedora Core 4 is out: "Ladies and Gentlemen, you may have *thought* you were using the latest and greatest in open source software, but folks, today we have something really, really exciting for you. It purrs. It hums. It mesmerizes. It is ... FEDORA CORE FOUR. That's right, the premier open source operating system has just turned 4 -- four releases that is! But before we tell you how much this is going to cost, here are a few of the fabulous features: GNOME 2.10, OpenOffice.org 2.0 prerelease, Eclipse and a 100% open source Java stack, Fedora Extras, KDE 3.4, PPC. All of that, yes, all of that. But, wait!, before you reach for your wallet, you should hear about a few more of Fedora Core 4's fabulous features...." Here is the full release announcement and, for the more serious types, also the release notes.

Lineox Enterprise Linux 4.026

Lineox Enterprise Linux has been updated to version 4.026: "Always Current Lineox Enterprise Linux 4.026 with Update 1 available. In the version 4.026 the installation environment is rebuilt, so it offers better hardware support during the installation. Compared to version 4.0 4.026 has 286 updated packages totalling 650MB and x86_64 release has even more. The x86_64 release requires either AMD Opteron or Athlon64 CPU based computer. Some new Intel Xeon and Pentium IV processors with EM64T will also be able to run this version." Read the release announcement and release notes (i386, x86_64) for more information.

Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 for AMD64 (Unofficial)

The ISO images of the unofficial port of Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 "sarge" to the AMD64 architecture are now available for download. The release was formally announced last week in this mailing list post: "Following the 'big' release we have a small one to announce: Debian AMD64 Port is now also declared stable. From now on there will be no changes to this archive, except for point releases which will be coordinated closely with the Debian ones. Security support for this release will be provided by the Debian Security Team via security.debian.org." See also the release notes for more details.

Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 AS Update 1

Update 1 of Pie Box Enterprise 4 AS has been released: "Update 1 of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 was made available today. This update includes the following enhancements: improved disk dump capability (including SATA and megaraid support); updated Intel Centrino ipw2100/ipw2200 wireless drivers and firmware; driver updates; many platform hardware support updates and bug fixes; security updates, bug fixes, and feature enhancements to numerous system packages. Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 is aimed at people who need a stable OS with a long lifespan but don't want an expensive bundled support contract. It is built from the source RPMs of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 AS with only four packages modified in order to remove Red Hat's trademarks." Here is the full release announcement.

Xarnoppix 3

Xarnoppix is a Knoppix-based live and installation CD with complete support for the Catalan language. The all new version 3 has been released with the following new features: included TuxType, TuxMath and other educational software; new GRUB boot menu with options to specify a persistent home, choose manual configuration, start as a thin client, perform a memory test, and other options; KDE, XFce and Fluxbox are the three available desktops; support for hard disk installation with the help of a simple graphical installer. See the release announcement (in Catalan) for further details.

Xarnoppix - a Knoppix-based distribution in Catalan with focus on education and young Linux users(full image size: 372kB)

Slamd64 Linux 10.1

As the name suggests, Slamd64 Linux is a port of Slackware Linux to the AMD64 architecture. The project's first stable version has been released: "Slamd64 10.1 Final has now been released and is starting to hit the mirrors. Thanks for all of your help, support, testing, bug fixing (and reporting), and just generally being nice people. Mini-changelog: K3B fixed to not have libsamplerate dependency; TCL libdir symlinks fixed; added glibc-nptl into testing/; fixed typos in isolinux.cfg; linux32 packaging issue fixed; guile fixed; issues with OpenGL on systems not using NVIDIA's binary drivers fixed; wireless-tools missing .so fixed. As normal, ISOs and xdeltas from the previous release are available. Here is the complete release announcement.

Kurumin Linux 4.2

Kurumin Linux 4.2 has been formally released to public download mirrors. This is a minor incremental upgrade with the only noteworthy changes being some corrections and updates to the Kurumin scripts, panel and hard disk installer. Several packages have been upgraded to newer versions to synchronise the package set with that in Debian's testing branch. More information is available in the release announcement and release notes (both links in Portuguese).

Litrix 3.0 has been released. Unlike the distribution's previous releases, which were based on Slackware, the latest release is based on Gentoo Linux. This brings the power of Portage to Litrix, together with easy installation of software, better language support, excellent documentation, and a possibility to re-master the live CD with a simple script. Read the full release announcement (in Portuguese) for more information.

SLYNUX 2.0

As reported on CXOtoday.com earlier, SLYNUX is a new easy-to-use Linux distribution developed by a 15-year old Indian student Sarath Lakshman. The Knoppix-based live and installation CD comes with a wide variety of applications for web surfing, multimedia playback, image editing, and office tasks, as well as support for internal modems, digital cameras, printers, and most other common hardware. Besides English, the CD also includes Malayalam fonts and an on-screen keyboard for typing in Malayalam, the principal language of the South Indian state of Kerala. More information about the project can be found on its home page.

tinysofa classic server 2.0 Update 1

Update 1 of tinysofa classic server, a free enterprise-class distribution originally based on Trustix Secure Linux, has been released: "tinysofa classic server 2.0 Update 1 (Ceara) is now generally available. This is a major release which brings with it the first x86_64 edition of tinysofa classic server and incorporates all bug and security fixes released to date. 'Ceara' features: The Linux 2.6.11 kernel, grsecurity support, APT for advanced package management, the next generation PHP 5 environment (5.0.3), high availability features such as DRBD (0.7.10) and UCARP (1.1), the latest development tools and languages (GCC 3.4.3, Python 2.4), and much more." Visit the project's home page to read the release announcement.

Gnoppix 1.0

The developers of the Ubuntu-based Gnoppix project have released the first stable version of their live CD: "The Gnoppix project presents version 1.0 of the Gnoppix Linux live CD. Gnoppix 1.0 can be downloaded for the Intel i386 platform here. PowerPC and AMD64 platforms will be ready soon. Gnoppix 1.0 comes with GNOME 2.10." The release announcement can be read on the distribution's home page.

Gentoox 4.0

Gentoox is a Gentoo-based operating system for the Xbox. Version 4.0 "Home Edition" has been released: "So here it is, the one everyone's been waiting for... I proudly present Gentoox Home v4.0. Notable changes: Gentoox Loader v5.11; updated software as of 04-Jun-2005; fully sync-ed with magic as of 12-Jun-2005; Sparkle v1.5; removed LED tutorials - they are now part of the Loader; KDE 3.4.1; XFce 4.2.0; Switched to 2005.0/2.4 profile; Stardust is more friendly to v1.6 Xboxes with overscan." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information.

Ufficio Zero 0.5

Ufficio Zero is an Italian Linux distribution based on Arch Linux and targetting office environments. A new version was released earlier today. Changes in Ufficio Zero 0.5 include the following: usability improvements; addition of an image viewing application (gThumb); addition of the GNOME volume manager; automatic time synchronisation of the system clock (if network connection present); various bug fixes as reported by users (floppy formatting, CD audio software, browser bookmarks...). More details are available in the release announcement (in Italian).

MoLinux 1.2

MoLinux 1.2, code name "Dulcinea", has been released. This release is the first one to be based on Ubuntu Linux, rather than Debian and Progeny; subsequently, the Anaconda installer has been replaced with the new Debian installer, which, despite being a text-mode program, is more robust, has better hardware detection capabilities, and is easier to modify and maintain. A major new feature of this release is the integration of MoLinux-related documentation with GNOME help and documentation files in Yelp. MoLinux is built around the kernel 2.6.10, GNOME 2.10, Evolution 2.2.1, OpenOffice.org 1.1.3, and many other popular applications. Read the release announcement (in Spanish) for further details.

Slamd64 Linux. Slamd64 is an unofficial port of Slackware Linux to the x86_64 architecture.

SLYNUX SLYNUX is a Knoppix-based live and installation CD designed with Linux beginners in mind. It comes with a wide variety of applications for web surfing, multimedia playback, image editing, and office tasks, as well as support for internal modems, digital cameras, printers, and most other common hardware. Besides English, the CD also includes Malayalam fonts and an on-screen keyboard for typing in Malayalam, the principal language of the South Indian state of Kerala. SLYNUX is developed by an Indian teenager.

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New on the waiting list

Educanix. Educanix is a Spanish live CD distribution designed for children between ages 3 and 10. The CD contains educational software for mathematics, geography, languages, etc, complemented by games for computer education and entertainment.